REVIEWSDAY TUESDAY: A Review of Keila V. Dawson's The King Cake Baby

TITLE: The King Cake Baby

AUTHOR: Keila V. Dawson

PUBLISHER: Pelican Publishing, 2015 

            In this unique cultural adaptation of The Gingerbread Man, a devious little King Cake Baby escapes an Old Creole woman's kitchen as she prepares to assemble her freshly baked King Cake for King's Day (January 6). 

While the ending won't be much of a surprise to anyone who has read the Gingerbread Man tales, the King Cake Baby's journey is unique to New Orleans and sweetened with rich, cultural details. Best of all, an Easy King Cake Recipe (with Cream Cheese Icing) waits at the end. Comic book artist Vernon Smith's active illustrations are rendered in Mardi Gras colors and add to the festivities. 

AUTHOR BIO: Keila Dawson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Crescent City has remained close to her heart in spite of her work and life abroad and across the USA. She has worked in the Philippines, Japan, Egypt, and on both US coasts as a teacher, school administrator, and educational consultant before she became an author. In this, her debut picture book, Keila shares her love of Louisiana culture highlighting a cultural tradition unique to her hometown. Find a FREE study guide to include a glossary, comprehension, math, written expression activities as well as coloring pages and craft ideas printable from her website at www.keiladawson.com

ABOUT Multicultural Children’s Book Day #ReadYourWorld

Our mission is to not only raise awareness for the kid’s books that celebrate diversity, but to get more of these of books into classrooms and libraries.

Our Mission: The MCCBD team’s mission to spread the word and raise awareness about the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Our young readers need to see themselves within the pages of a book and experience other cultures, languages, traditions and religions within the pages of a book. We encourage readers, parents, teachers, caregivers and librarians to follow along the fun book reviews, author visits, event details, a multicultural children’s book linky and via our hashtag (#ReadYourWorld) on Twitter and other social media.

The co-creators of this unique event are Mia Wenjen from Pragmatic Mom and Valarie Budayr from Jump Into a Book/Audrey Press. You can find a bio for Mia and Valarie here.

Multicultural Children’s Book day 2016 Medallion Level Sponsors! #ReadYourWorld

Platinum: Wisdom Tales Press * StoryQuest Books*Lil Libros

Gold: Author Tori Nighthawk*Candlewick Press,* Bharat Babies

Silver: Lee and Low Books*Chronicle Books*Capstone Young Readers T

Tuttle Publishing ,NY Media Works, LLC/KidLit TV

Bronze: Pomelo Books* Author Jacqueline Woodson*Papa Lemon Books* Goosebottom Books*Author Gleeson Rebello*ShoutMouse Press*Author Mahvash Shahegh* China Institute.org*Live Oak Media

Multicultural Children’s Book Day has 12 amazing Co-Host and you can us the links below or view them here.

All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share,Educators Spin on it,Growing Book by Book,Imagination Soup,I’m Not the Nanny,InCultural Parent, Kid World Citizen,Mama Smiles,Multicultural Kid Blogs,Spanish Playground

Classroom Reading Challenge:Help spread the word on our  Classroom Reading Challenge . This very special offering from MCCBD offers teachers and classrooms the chance to (very easily) earn a free hardcover multicultural children's book for their classroom library. These books are not only donated by the Junior Library Guild, but they are pre-screened and approved by them as well.

What we could really use some help with is spreading the word to your teacher/ librarian/classroom connections so we can get them involved in this program. There is no cost to teachers and classrooms and we've made the whole process as simple as possible. You can help by tweeting the below info:

​ Teachers! Earn a FREE #Multicultural Kids Book for Your Classroom! #teachers, #books #teacherlife  http://ow.ly/UUy96

The Classroom Reading Challenge has begun! Teachers can earn a free diversity book! #teachers, #books  http://multiculturalchildrensbookday.com/?p=1796​